The Science Fiction of Today and Days Gone By

As a character-focused episode, the events of Defiance‘s Season 2 Episode 5, “Putting the Damage On,” give us an interesting glimpse into the psyches of three of the main characters. Since this is likely to have big ramifications moving forward, I thought it’d be interesting to take a look at just what these revelations mean for each of them.

Watching Star Trek TNG as a kid, one of the things that I always wondered about was why an upstanding, philosophical guy like Picard would ever want to run around in the 1940s noir-style world of Dixon Hill in his free time. It just didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would appeal to him, and yet it’s one of the few moments in the entire series where we see Picard earnestly having fun. But now, having read some of the most famous books of that time, I think I understand why.